The former Plaid Cymru MP has suggested a constitutional halfway house for Wales he believes could be supported by both “progressive unionists” and “pragmatic nationalists”.

Former Plaid Cymru MP Adam Price has suggested a constitutional halfway house for Wales he believes could be supported by both “progressive unionists” and “pragmatic nationalists”.

Expanding on an idea he first mooted in the Institute of Welsh Affairs’ Agenda journal, Mr Price said it was clear that independence was not a realistic option in the short term.

“As a nation we lack self-confidence because of the weakness of our economic position,” said Mr Price, who stressed that he was speaking for himself and not on behalf of Plaid Cymru. “Nations that lack self-confidence do not tend to back independence.

“So from the point of view of someone like myself, who believes Wales’ best chance of future prosperity lies in our having control of the necessary levers in an independent state, there’s the need to look at other possible constitutional arrangements as an interim measure.”

Mr Price, a leading adviser to Plaid leader Leanne Wood, said Wales was one of just five areas within the EU that saw themselves as nations but did not currently have their own state – the others being Catalonia, the Basque Country, Scotland and Flanders.

“Wales is the only one of them where independence isn’t realistically on the current agenda, for a combination of historical, economic and demographic reasons.

“Yet – and this is a very strong point – survey after survey has shown that most people in Wales want the big political decisions affecting them to be taken in Wales rather than at Westminster.

“Increasingly, too, there is an understanding across the political spectrum that the different crises affecting Wales – the drive to create more successful schools being pursued by [Education Minister] Leighton Andrews, the concerns about the Welsh language highlighted by the census figures and, underpinning everything, our economic performance – will only find solutions in Wales.”

In such a context, said Mr Price, it may be possible to work out a new constitutional relationship between Wales and the rest of the UK. Such a change could become inevitable whatever the result of the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence, the former MP argued.

The new arrangement suggested by Mr Price would be founded on the principle that sovereignty resided with the people of Wales, who could decide what powers would be delegated to a “confederal” British Parliament.

“It would be different to devolution and to the approach adopted by the Silk Commission [which has recommended tax-varying powers for the National Assembly] and could be described as devolution in reverse,” said Mr Price.

“Wales could decide that it made sense to devolve responsibility for defence to the confederal Parliament. Another area could be social security. People move around on this Ireland – I’ve got a brother who lives in Newcastle – and it makes sense to have some common services. There are precedents – before both countries entered the EU, Irish citizens had access to the British social security system.”

Mr Price said the need for Wales to improve its economic performance incrementally over the next two decades was something both unionists and nationalists could agree on.

“To achieve that, we need a number of game-changing mega-initiatives like a version of the Severn Barrage scheme and perhaps the creation of a new international airport aimed at pulling in millions of customers from Wales and the South West of England, possibly by reviving the idea of a Severnside Airport to supersede those at Cardiff and Bristol,” he said.

“If our economy improves over the next couple of decades, nationalists and unionists will both be able to buy into the success.

“For nationalists like me, economic success would be a stepping stone towards independence, where we would have all the levers at our disposal. For unionists, however, success would be interpreted as a justification for Wales to remain as an integrated part of the British state.

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